NOW WE’RE ROLLING! Mayor Bloomberg yesterday officially announced plans to build the New York Wheel, a towering Ferris wheel on Staten Island’s northern waterfront. Photo: AP

NOW WE’RE ROLLING! Mayor Bloomberg yesterday officially announced plans to build the New York Wheel, a towering Ferris wheel on Staten Island’s northern waterfront. (AP)

NOW WE’RE ROLLING! Mayor Bloomberg yesterday officially announced plans to build the New York Wheel, a towering Ferris wheel on Staten Island’s northern waterfront. (
)

Ours is bigger than yours!

Describing it as unlike any attraction “on the planet,” Mayor Bloomberg gave the high sign yesterday to a 625-foot-tall Ferris wheel for Staten Island that will become the tallest in the world and could transform the borough’s sleepy waterfront into a thriving tourist and shopping destination.

The New York Wheel’s opening is planned for New Year’s Eve 2015, with an adjacent 350,000-square-foot mall housing 100 retail outlets coming online in 2016.

City officials have spent decades trying to figure out how to develop the island’s St. George section, which, though home to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, has languished while other neighborhoods near Manhattan, such as Long Island City in Queens and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, have boomed.

While the Staten Island Ferry is the city’s third-largest tourist attraction, drawing 2 million visitors a year, few venture farther than the few steps into the St. George Ferry Terminal required for the ride back to Manhattan.

Like just about everyone else who spoke at the press conference hosted by the mayor, Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro called the combined $480 million development a game changer.

“In 10 years, St. George will be Battery Park West,” he said, referring to the spectacularly successful mini-city created in lower Manhattan in the 1980s.

The city’s wheel will be 84 feet taller than the current record holder, the Singapore Flyer, and will tower above the famous London Eye by 183 feet.

It will be capable of holding 1,440 people per spin, with up to 40 passengers in each of its 36 enclosed pods. Officials said the standard entry fee is expected to be $20, compared with $27.58 for the cheapest ticket currently available for the London Eye.

At yesterday’s upbeat event, a playful Schumer suggested to Bloomberg that the city’s wheel be named “Mike” because “it’s going to go around for more than three terms.”